This is the tale that began in 2006 in my first year of beekeeping in Atlanta, GA. ...there's still so much to learn.

Welcome - Explore my Blog

I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I began my 12th year of beekeeping in April 2017. Now there are almost 1300posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

Even if you find one post on the subject, I've posted a lot on basic beekeeping skills like installing bees, harvesting honey, inspecting the hive, etc. so be sure to search for more once you've found a topic of interest to you. And watch the useful videos and slide showson the sidebar. All of them have captions. Please share posts of interest via Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here. Along the way, I've passed a number of certification levels and am now a Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

Want to Pin this post?

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Cross Your Fingers, I'm Making a Split!

Today, suited to the max, Jeff and I returned to Colony Square. The temperature was in the high 60s and tomorrow is going to be another summer day in February, so it's time to make a split from this colony. I brought a nuc (actually I brought two but we decide only to make one today), and all the extra gear I needed: screened wire to block the entrance, bungee cords to hold the nuc to its bottom board in the car, wire cutters to cut the wire to fit, lots of smoker fuel (read: a full bucket of pine straw), an extra bee suit and veil for Jeff, lots of stuff.

I stopped at Blue Heron on the way and it's pretty good bet that the nuc there has died. I took off the top and found no bees in the top nuc box. There were some bees in the bottom box, but it's a pretty good assumption that they are marauders from another hive.

At Jeff and Valerie's, it was a different story. The bees were flying actively in and out of all the hives when I arrived. Colony Square being the largest was the most active.

However, even the swarm hive had a bee flying in with pollen on her legs (in photo below). This isn't a guarantee of brood, but we put a frame of brood and eggs in there last week, so maybe, maybe, maybe they are working on a queen. We left this hive alone. Five Alive sported a crowded entry with bees landing laden with pollen. And Lenox Pointe was chugging along as well.

I didn't take photos while we worked, but we agreed on several things before we started.

1. I've not done well with splits - mostly because I'm always so worried about accidentally taking the queen that I don't take enough bees with the split. To do this split, we decided that it didn't matter if we took the queen. Should that happen, we would interrupt the brood cycle at Colony Square. With the extremely warm winter we have had, this year should be an overwhelming varroa mite year, so interrupting the brood cycle at CS couldn't be all bad. And if we didn't take the queen, the colony will keep growing as it has.

2. We would only take the eggs and brood from the first box on the top of the hive. Well, the first (top) box on the hive was solid honey and very heavy, but the box under that would be our source of eggs and brood. We didn't want to disrupt this hive any more than we had to, given our last week's experience.

3. We thought through all our steps ahead of time.

We set up both nucs;

We removed the replacement frames I had in the nucs;

We set the tops on the ground;

We put the bungee cords under the hives, ready to fasten;

We measured and inserted the screened wire in the entry openings.

Then we opened the hive and removed the top honey medium. We used lots of smoke and hive drapes.

We draped the first brood box without removing it from the hive. We pulled frames and found brood and eggs in frames 2 and 3. Frame 4 was one of the empties we had checkerboarded and it was not yet being used. All told we removed three frames of brood and eggs, one frame of solid honey and one frame of honey, pollen and a little brood.

The replacement frames that we put back in the hive were all drawn comb from my hives at home.

By now the bees were not happy. Jeff got many stingers in his glove as you can see and got stung once through the glove.

At that point we decided that we would only take one nuc's worth of split today and consider doing it again in the next couple of weeks. We loaded the nuc into my car.

Meanwhile I had set up a bottom board and a slatted rack at my house, waiting for the arrival of this nuc. It was late in the day and I had a meeting of people coming to my house at 5:00 so I will wait until tomorrow to move them into a hive box of their very own. For now they will spend the night in the nuc.

The hive box beside them is all set up with frames and ready for the bees tomorrow. Meanwhile it was reassuring to see the bees at the entry of the hive. I'll also remove all the bungees from under the hive tomorrow. I hope they make a good queen! And that they succeed at making a queen!

Tomorrow I'll move them into the hive box and probably feed them to help them draw comb.

6 comments:

Good luck with these splits, I'll be doing my first split soon unless the hive has problems beforehand.

Found out something interesting about SHB, using a SHB trap bottom board with #6 wire, the oil pan has been removed for winter. I did a powdered sugar treatment the other day and placed the sticky board where the tray goes. Apparently the beetles don't like the treatment and I found a good number of them upside down on the board. Later found they were playing possum as about half of them were missing later when it warmed up. I'm thinking the wire on all bottom boards should be #6 so any beetles could be killed after treatment.

Pin this post

LinkWithin

Sustainable award

Search this blog

Linda in her beesuit

Atlanta Beekeeping Meetup Group

7 PM on the third Tuesday of the month at the First Baptist Church of Sandy Springs (650 Mount Vernon Highway NE, Sandy Springs, GA). Want to talk bees with like-minded beekeepers who want to discuss things about bees?

Join us for interesting discussions about keeping bees in the many ways that people do. Click here to find our Meetup group page.

Buy me a cup of tea

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It takes a lot of time and effort to keep this blog going. If this blog or my slideshows have been helpful to you and you'd like to buy me a cup of tea or two, just click the button below to make a contribution to the ongoing life energy of this blog! And thanks in advance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Email me!

Contact Me

Add your comments, thoughts, and questions to my blog posts.
Or please feel free to email me as we all figure out the challenging world of beekeeping.
Email Linda

Atlanta Weather

Translate this site to your language

Great Quote from Richard Taylor, beekeeper and writer

"There are a few rules of thumb that are useful guides. One is that when you are confronted with some problem in the apiary and you do not know what to do, then do nothing. Matters are seldom made worse by doing nothing and are often made much worse by inept intervention." --The How-To-Do-It book of Beekeeping, Richard Taylor

Blog Visitors from All Over the World

Since I added this counter in May 2009, visitors have come to this site from 209 countries - the most recent being Guinea! The top four countries from which visitors come are the US, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia with Turkey and Greece close behind.

Thanks for stopping by

Thanks for visiting my blog and following my beekeeping adventure!

This site is listed on many websites across the country as a good site for beginners to visit. Blogger tells me that there are over 1300 posts on this blog for you to explore. There are slide shows and videos on the sidebar addressing beekeeping challenges like harvesting, solar wax melters, and doing hive inspections.

I may have already addressed a bee issue which is on your mind. The search feature will send you to the most recent post on a subject. Be sure to keep looking because I've posted a lot on many issues. Use the Google search feature on this page will help you search this site to find posts dealing with your question.

Feel free to email me with your comments or questions; "pin" my posts; or share them on Facebook.